Saturday, May 22, 2010

Book Review -- A Matter of Class

Summary:Library JournalHer scandalous near elopement with a coachman and his habitually drunken and spendthrift ways have brought Lady Annabelle Ashton and Mr. Reginald Mason to a pretty pass. Their families have had nothing to do with each other for 30 years, ever since the coal merchant Masons moved next door to the Earl of Havercroft's estate. But the highly successful Mr. Mason would like nothing better than to bring his aristocratic neighbor low by rescuing his daughter's reputation along with the earl's suffering finances while teaching his own son how to behave like a gentleman. Marriage between the two seems the only solution. VERDICT Fans of the popular Balogh (Seducing an Angel) are accustomed to her longer, more complex historical romances. Yet this slip of a novel manages to reveal a great deal about its misguided protagonists and how the past catches up with them. The happily-ever-after is never in doubt, but the unexpected denouement will have readers gasping and smiling with delight. A can't-miss choice for romance fans.

This was the biggest waste of time. I was sucked in by the pretty cover and the forlorn looking woman on the front AND that it was a brief 200 pages, perfect for a book "interlude" opposite my Wolf Hall odyssey. I don't read romance fiction often, but I do love a little romantic pas de deux every now and then. This one was pure nonsense. The characters were insipid and cardboard. The dialogue between the two characters (that spans the course of their lifetime) was for much older people, not the child/adolescent/teenagers/yearly young adults they were suppose to be. The author's use of the term ton, meaning society or town, was so overused I wanted to take a sharpie and black it out every time I read it.

This was really, really, bad.

At least I only squandered one afternoon.

After this, I will be glad to welcome back Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.